Why So Few Women in Politics? Ask Sandra Fluke.

Sandra Fluke, the 32-year-old activist and well-known reproductive rights advocate famous for being labeled a “slut” by Rush Limbaugh, is not running for Congress. She was never officially a candidate for the seat opened up by the retirement of veteran lawmaker Henry Waxman, it turns out, and after a short-lived trial balloon, has filed to run for a state Senate seat instead. The news set off a collective sigh of disappointment on the left, where Fluke’s potential candidacy was widely seen as a sign that social justice and advocacy issues would get more champions in D.C and that millennial activism could finally get a seat at the table in a Congress predominately filled with—let’s face it—old men.

Unfortunately, that hope was abruptly snuffed out, and instead, we’re likely to get another traditional, mid-career candidate—theoretically, a safer choice. For a Democratic Party that desperately needs new blood and fresh ideas, that’s a major missed opportunity.

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It’s not that Democrats should worry about losing the seat. Whoever goes on the ticket in the deep-blue Los Angeles district, which includes liberal hotbeds like Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Venice Beach, should cruise to an easy victory, and will probably be able to remain in Congress for as long as he or she chooses.

And that’s why Fluke might have run into problems. The state has a top-two primary rule, meaning that regardless of party affiliation, the two leading vote-getters on primary day will face each other in the general election. That makes the Democratic endorsement a major prize, and one that candidates are likely to go to the mat over.

With less than a week passing since Waxman’s announcement, big names are already signaling their intention to run. State Senator Ted Lieu is expected to be a frontrunner, and both former city controller Wendy Greuel and Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who will be term-limited out of office in 2014, are likely to announce as well. All three are established politicians with proven, winning electoral records.

The comparison between these more traditional candidates and Fluke is obvious: She’s young and seemingly less experienced. Many would be tempted to say a federal office is too large a first step for an untried candidate.

Did Democratic leaders pressure Fluke with those very talking points behind the scenes? If so, they did the party a huge disservice. The “wait your turn” factor has been one of the biggest challenges in getting young women to run for federal office, and many political experts see it as the key reason there is still a disproportionately large gender gap in politics. While ongoing analysis of political wins show that female candidates are just as likely to win their races as men, they’re still much less likely to initiate a run. The Women’s Campaign Forum, a non-partisan nonprofit established to encourage more women to run for office, estimates that 50 percent fewer women than men consider running for office. And fears about not being experienced enough, not educated enough or not established enough to put together a campaign are often the reasons why.

Men, according to a report from the Center for American Women In Politics, are twice as likely as women to jump straight into federal offices as a first-time candidate, whereas women are more inclined to see a local election as a necessary first step. While an inexperienced male candidate will often choose a congressional target for his first electoral contest, women are twice as likely to pick a local race, from school board to mayor to local legislature.

That mindset has a ripple effect, making future generations of women that much less likely to consider their own runs. As a more recent study conducted by American University’s School of Public Affairs found, of 18 to 25 year olds questioned about political ambitions, men were far more likely than women to have considered running for office some day, and twice as likely as women to have considered it many times. Women, on the other hand, were almost twice as likely to say they had absolutely no interest in running for office.